section header with Spinner (drop down menu) in android using holo visual language

Question

I have a screen that displays section headers. I display 3 section headers in a scroll view.

My problem is that each section can change its content based on time intervals.

For example, I have 3 section headers like:

Gold Price 
---------------------------
List item 1 
List item 2 
List item 3 

Petrol Price 
---------------------------
List item 1 
List item 2 
List item 3 

Silver Price 
---------------------------
List item 1 
List item 2 
List item 3 

Now any of the section headers like (Gold Price) can change its content (list items) by selecting different time spans (last 7 days, last 2 weeks, last 1 month, ...)

I am looking for a way to display the time span options (spinner) along with the section headers.

Furthermore I can't use tabs because there already exist tabs in the screen. And there is other content than the scroll view in the same screen. I want a solution to display them and respect the holo visual language in android.

Is it fine to use a spinner as a section header with a divider displayed below it?

Answer 1

Ideally, all three categories should be placed alongside each other horizontally because they are of the same nature and pertain to the same kind of elements. Requiring the user to scroll downward through them, especially when some are longer than others or off of the screen, will make retrieving information from them much more difficult -

Although you have expressed concern that there isn't a lot of spatial real estate to work with, this potential solution can be consolidated in a usable way -

It then follows that the spinner, containing the parameter for time adjustment, can be made applicable to all three categories at once. This way, the layout intuitively suggests the comparative differences between items over time (vertical) and the differences between items amongst the categories (horizontal).

If you wanted to make things really intuitive, you could forgo the heading spinner entirely, and allow the user to scroll down for a larger time interval!

Answer 2

You have limited building blocks on Android, so you could use:

1. Standard Spinner control
2. "Hacked" Scrollable Tab control – could be tricky
3. "Hacked" Picker control – could be tricky